More Oregon businesses will face emissions reporting requirements

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Businesses will soon be required to report — and pay to report — more of their greenhouse gases to the state.

Oregon’s new rules — authorized by the Legislature in June 2009 and still in the tinkering phase — are intended to reach beyond the roughly 180 businesses already required to report greenhouse gases to state authorities.

Those businesses are among approximately 1,200 that currently hold state permits — 115 businesses in Oregon also hold federal permits — allowing them to release air pollution.

Now, Oregon proposes to reach beyond those industries for greenhouse gas reports from non-industrial sources, noting the industries, utilities and waste managers that currently report account for less than 30 percent of Oregon’s total emissions.

"We wanted to get the rest of Oregon’s footprint, and to do that, the big sectors are the transportation sector, home heating fuels, commercial heating fuels and then out-of-state power generation," said Uri Papish, air quality program operations manager for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

Papish estimates the new rules, if approved as written, would impact about 155 fuel distributors; five suppliers of natural gas, including Northwest Natural; three investor-owned utilities: PGE, PacificCorp and Idaho Power; four electric service providers, and about 37 consumer-owned utilities.

All will be required to calculate greenhouse gas emissions produced by the fuel and energy they sell after its combusted. Some — like the 37 consumer-owned utilities — may be able to submit one report from a third party.

Many of those sectors already do some reporting. Utilities report energy sales to the Public Utility Commission, for example, and fuel distributors report their sales to the Oregon Department of Transportation.

What’s different, said John Ledger, vice president of external affairs for Associated Oregon Industries, is translating that data into greenhouse gas emissions with a simple conversion — and paying a fee to submit it to DEQ.

"The data has been around for quite some time. It’s actually an easy computation to go from fuel to emissions," he said. "For many facilities it’s going to be exactly the same (as reporting to the federal government), except when you report to the federal government, it’s free."

By contrast, those impacted by the proposed new rules in Oregon will pay fees up to $4,500 to support the state’s effort to collect the data.

The effort stems from a 2007 request by Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski to adopt standards for greenhouse gas reporting, before the federal reporting rules were in place.

An advisory committee representing businesses helped craft the rules and fees now being considered. A series of public meetings are scheduled between the draft and final adoption of the program. Those meetings end July 21.

Should the rules take hold, they place Oregon among a handful of states launching similar programs to help grasp emissions of greenhouse gases by state. Similar programs are already underway in California and New Mexico. Washington state officials are proposing a program. Such programs allow the states a clearer picture of emissions to shape public policy, a picture federal data collection does not provide.

Papish said DEQ will offer workshops to businesses to help them understand the rules and learn how to calculate greenhouse gas emissions.

Lee van der Voo, lvdvoo*at*gmail.com, is a freelance writer for Sustainable Business Oregon.